Air con fan rumbling.

[Mike McKinstry]

Hi,
Anyone had this problem-is it common.
Would guess bearings gone?
When aircon on makes weird rumbling racket!!

Mike

[passman]

Yes, my auxillary fan is also rumbling and today having passed it's MOt I asked the garage to quote me for a replacement. £285 + vat.

[andym82]

When I first got my car there was a rumble/low buzzing sound only when the air con was on...found the bonnet release cable was against the fan. Worth a check.

[Lex Luthor]

Hi,
Anyone had this problem-is it common.
Would guess bearings gone?
When aircon on makes weird rumbling racket!!


Is this the air blower or the radiator cooling fan your talking about ?

[Mike McKinstry]

Aircon/aux fan.
I am sure you can get for approx £70.
Alot of work to change as bumper/rad etc will all have to come off to change I suspect! I am trying to leave mine until noise is permanent and I have to change it-knowing my luck belt will snap and destroy something else or fan will shear off into rad!!!!

Mike

[Lex Luthor]

Alot of work to change as bumper/rad etc will all have to come off to change I suspect!

No..its an easy change. It is held on with one screw.
Sure there is a howto in the forum somewhere.

[Mike McKinstry]

I have noticed noise appears when braking more which would seem to indicate that the fan is moving forward and maybe rubbing on something-I know it is this fan or aircon related because as soon as noise starts I can stop it by switching off aircon and it will usually run fine again?

One screw sounds like a huge improvement over my perception!! Where do you think the "How do I" for this is-I cant seem to find it?

many thanks,
Mike

[Lex Luthor]

Hi mike. There is one screw near the top, then the whole assy twists off.
I think there is a little catch on it.
The cable runs back along the bottom of the radiator to the connector panel under the cover at the power steering reservoir.

Buy one from GSF for +- £60 and all will be clear.

There is just sufficient space to get it out.....

Wearing suitable protection you can stop the electric fan by hand as long as it is only at slow speed. When you stop it you can see that the noise goes away.

Rgds

[Mike McKinstry]

Hi mate,
yep.
Anyone done this I assume it is screw near top and then the whole fan unit twists in some way to release 3 brackets??.

REALLY IMPORTANT-Haynes tell you to take off the bumper and rad!!!
This does not appear to be necessary!

Mike

[rob123]

I've just repaired my electric fan today (1.8T 20v X reg)

Past year there has been intermittent high volume whirring nosie coming from the front of the engine compartment. This occurred only when the Air Con was on.

Whilst it was in at VW for a service I asked them to check it out - their diagnosis was the need to replace the auxillary belt powering the compressor and £400 for the pleasure.

Fine I thought, just don't bother with the aircon - even though it works fine but very noisy.

Today decided just to investigate.

Yes Haynes says to take the front off the car but you can remove the elctric fan assembly without doing that. The space is very tight and your knuckles become very scratched but its possible.

My tips: take the Cam Belt cover off and shift the two tubes it supports to the top of the tappet housing.

Remove the screw on the upper left side of the electric fan cowling.

Then to save you a million swear words -theres a clip bottom left of the cowling. You see two black plastic bits sticking back towards the engine/away from the rad. The right hand one is to be displaced to the right which lifts a small locking block of plastic away from the radiator cowling. (lower right hand picture shows this locking thing)

You can now rotate the fan cowling left to right rotation.

Un plug the wire supplying the fan from the connectors by the power steering reservoir. (detached orange one in pics below)

Theres a metal bar running vertically between the electric fan cowling on the left and the viscous fan on the right. It stops just under the bonnet locking mechanism. Undo its attachment to the locking mechanism (one 10mm Bolt - no nut)

This makes it easier to remove the fan power wire and the fan cowling.

After that remove the three 10mm nuts holding the fan motor to the fan cowling.

Its easier to remove them separately than together.

After a few more swear words your out.

My Fan Motor would have been replaced by VW (£125 for the part) but I removed the back plate (******* with a hammer) and found that the central rotator inserted into the back plate but had no lubrication. (back plate with side which i removed shown in left hand pic)

One blob of grease. Resited the back plate (hammer). Tested worked - Hundreds saved.

Then put everything back in.



The exercise hurts a bit but not as much as VW would have charged me!


Oh and the fan motor is exclusive supply by VW - Valeo make it only for them, so cheaper alternatives are hard to come by. Alternatively use a hammer microadjuster (**** it and see)

Rob

[gearhead188]

Rob it's an easy repair job once you have discovered how to do it. I think i probably cussed more than you, but like you said removing the cam belt cover makes it easier and getting to know how the little clip works on the fan assembly helps too. GSF part was £64 including delivery.

Reading your post and others makes me wonder, do any of the these VW garages know what they talking about?

[rob123]

Money - the bottom line.

Just out to make money and play on the fact that people aren't so car savy.

As the Haynes manual says even in servicing there are only a couple of things that need specialist equipment for the rest its a big hammer and a good anglosaxon swear word.

[andre 2000]

Thank you Rob 123

I had this exact problem and followed your method - worked for me.

Pity the bodger before me didn't do the same.
Some to$$er has replaced the fan at some point with a second hand unit [it says A4/Passat on it in yellow paint marker!] and in the process had smashed one of the 3 lugs off the frame/cowl the fan sits in so it wouldn't sit flat.

Haynes usually ok at this stuff but seems to have missed it. Take front bumper off indeed! Tsk tsk.

Spindle now greased both ends so we'll see how it goes from here.

Great tips though, and swearing did seem to help a lot!

[rob123]

pleased to help.

[sebring911]

Thank you your instructions were right on save me a lot of work great thanks again

[rob123]

wicked, 2years on mine still hasn't required a "second visit":D

[gazwelly1]

if ever you need parts like the fan do a search on ebay I got one for £30 and fitted it in 1/2 hour, just enough room to get it out without dismantling the front of your car:Blush:

[redredreddd]

Just a thought. I had a similar sounding problem when my aircon was on high speed, the whole car felt like it was shaking. Turns out my son had fed small change from my console into the air vents on the top of the dash. This in turn rolled down the vent into the fan in the footwell area of the car. Broke a piece of plastic off inside, but was made good by my local garage from inside. The glove box had to come out and somehow he fixed the rumble.
Hope this helps

Ray

[sibert]

Hi,

I appear to be having this same noise issue. The noise is only evident when the air-con is switched from ECON to full, and the aux fan spins. However, I did stop the fan spinning but the noise continued! Should I be looking elsewhere (It is very difficult to distinguish if the noise is from the fan or the aircon unit itself)? Is there anyway to isolate the fan as a more thorough test?

Cheers.